Outrage fatigue

 

Jonah 3: 10 – 4: 11
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
September 20, 2020

Jonah is often misunderstood as a reluctant prophet, someone who ran from God’s call on his life. First we need to remember that there are no white people in the Bible. Jonah does everything he can to escape God, knowing full well that he’s only delaying the inevitable. God has commanded that Jonah go to the great city of Nineveh in the Assyrian empire, Israel’s conquerors, occupiers, colonizers, and tell them that they must change their ways or God will destroy the city. But understandably Jonah runs from God because he knows God. He boards a boat and tries to get as far away from God as he can get.



And yet wherever we are, God is, no matter what is going on. The boat sails into a storm and the sailors aboard blame Jonah. Jonah tells them that they can throw him into the sea and the storm will stop. The sailors are reluctant to do it but after some serious prayer they toss Jonah overboard and the seas immediately become calm. The sailors then worshiped God and made promises to keep God’s word.



Even so, God still needed Jonah so God sent a great fish that swallowed Jonah and he spent three days in its belly. So of course he reconsiders his position, offers a prayer of repentance, and says he’ll do as God asks. The big fish spits Jonah out onto the shore but no rest for the weary. God tells Jonah to get up and go to Nineveh and tell them to change their ways. It takes Jonah three days to walk across the great city, warning them that they have forty days to do things right or they will be destroyed.

Miraculously the people listen. Everyone—rich and poor, from the greatest to the least—dress in sackcloth, they fast, and when word reaches the king he does the same. He issues a proclamation that everyone and everything shall turn from their evil ways, even the animals. And here’s where the reading this morning picks up. God sees their repentance, their desire to do better, to avoid destruction, and God decides to not destroy them after all.



So why does Jonah get so angry? Does he hate the Ninevites so much that he wanted to see them punished, wiped off the face of the earth? Isn’t it a good thing that God is merciful and compassionate, slow to anger, with steadfast love in abundance and an almost marshmallow consistency when it comes to punishment and forgiveness? He knew God wasn’t known for tough love but also not for cheap grace.



Not to put too fine a point on it but the story could’ve been written this way. God commands the prophetic voice to come from a detained migrant in an Immigration Detention Center, an immigrant woman who has had a hysterectomy against her will and a nurse, Dawn Wooten, who has filed a whistleblower complaint against the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, GA. God wants them to go to Washington, D.C. to testify before Congress. But they’re not sure they want to go, because nothing ever really changes. Lots of fuss is made, performative speeches, press conferences, some people get really upset and then politics as usual. Kids are still in cages, human lives are still trafficked, parents are still deported, and the 21st century version of American eugenics quietly continues.



Just when they thought they were under water, just enough “big fish”, big names, rising stars, big donors to progressive causes convince these witnesses that they will be heard, things will change once we have the election, and a new administration is installed. Not only that but we held hope against hope that Ruth Bader Ginsburg would provide enough cover, enough “shade” from the cruel heat on the Supreme Court until January.

But it was not to be. The work of one righteous person, her indomitable spirit had taken some of the weight off our necks, and every time she dissented her voice was that of a prophet. But Justice Ginsburg could hold on no longer. Not only the prophetic witnesses to injustice but all those who put their hope in the cause of justice and righteousness unmuted themselves and cried out in anger and pain, because there are enough of those who have taken the consent of the governed and warped it into their own lust for power and control. Once again it feels as though evil has gained a foothold and our nation is flirting with the brink of self-destruction. We are worn through, burned out, not from compassion or empathy but from outrage.

Like Jonah, we are angry, we are speechless, we are disgusted. We shake our fist at God, at the universe, at one another, at ourselves, crying out “How long? How much longer must we endure?” There are times we too long to solve our problems with violence—against the powerful, against each other, against ourselves. We are angry enough to die. We can be too quick to destroy. At times we wish we could run away, escape, hide from God’s call to listen to prophetic voices who tell us what we don’t want to hear—because we’re not sure what we’re supposed to do or it’s just so hard to hang on somedays and do what we can. Old patterns of behavior are comfortable and familiar. Despair feels easier and our sense of impending doom a sure thing. God’s new thing seems impossible.

The story ends with Jonah’s reticence and God’s mercy. As with Nineveh, this is a complicated nation. Though there are some who would inaugurate another rise of fascism to hold onto power, there are others who are ready to leave behind what was and imagine another way. Though there are some who arm themselves to see white supremacy achieved, there are others who are committed to dismantling structural racism, the end of patriarchy, and the liberation of all people. Shall we then not destroy everything, shall we then have mercy, not for the unmerciful but because there is goodness and justice and wholeness worth fighting for? In a tweet on Friday evening, Bernice King said, “Divest your energy from imagining the worst. Invest your energy in committing to and working for better…to strategizing and organizing for justice.” 

The book of Jonah ended with a question. It is one story, one book out of many, a library of books that chronicles humanity’s long-enduring relationship with what is good and holy and true. The story isn’t over yet. Even if all our best efforts go down in flames, the story is not over yet. Love enfleshed does not give up on itself.



In Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 13, it reads:



“Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.”

In a 2017 interview with the BBC, Ruth Bader Ginsburg said these words: “A great man once said [in fact it was her husband, Marty Ginsburg] the true symbol of the United States is not the bald eagle. It is the pendulum. And when the pendulum swings too far in one direction it will go back. Some terrible things have happened in the United States. But one can only hope that we learn from those bad things. Our legislature is right now not functioning. But my dream is that we will get back to it. I think it will take strong people from both parties to say let’s get together and work for the good of the country. We are not experiencing the best of times, but there’s reason to hope that we will see a better day.” 

Amen, Justice Ginsburg. And from the depths of our hearts, thank you. May your memory be a revolution.

Benediction – enfleshed.com


We are not sent from here to simply rejoin the ordinary patterns of the world.

The task of radical love calls us to a different way.

As prophets break silences that oppress,

righteous anger cracks open holy possibilities,

and saints who went before us cry out from the past,

let us go and declare the nearness of the Kindom,

and offer ourselves faithfully to the labors of liberation.